Chandigarh: Dera Sacha Sauda chief and rape convict Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh on Wednesday walked out of the Sunaria jail in Haryana's Rohtak after he was granted a 20-day parole. During his temporary release period, Singh will stay at the Dera ashram in Barnawa in Uttar Pradesh's Baghpat.
He came out of jail under tight security on Wednesday morning after his release on parole, an official said. The Haryana government has granted a 20-day parole to Singh while barring him from taking part in election-related activities, making speeches and staying in the state during the period.
Singh is serving a 20-year sentence given in 2017 for raping two of his disciples. The Dera chief and three others were also convicted in 2019 for the murder of a journalist more than 16 years ago. He had sought a 20-day parole ahead of the October 5 Haryana Assembly polls.
According to the parole conditions, the sect chief will not take part in any election-related activity or deliver public speeches and will stay out of Haryana during the period. He will stay at Dera ashram in Uttar Pradesh's Barnawa (Baghpat) during the period.
The Dera chief had said that he wanted to stay in Baghpat during the parole if granted. The jail department had recently forwarded the Dera chief's parole plea to the office of the Haryana Chief Electoral Officer in view of the Model Code being in place for the assembly polls.
Chief Electoral Officer Pankaj Agarwal had said on Monday that the Haryana government may consider Singh's parole subject to the correctness of facts mentioned in his parole plea and satisfying other conditions with respect to the Model Code of Conduct for the elections.
Haryana goes to polls on October 5 and the results will be declared on October 8. In the past, some of Singh's paroles and furloughs have coincided with the polls in Punjab, Haryana and neighbouring states. The opposition parties had criticised the grant of relief to Singh.
Earlier in August this year, Singh was granted a 21-day furlough. He was granted three weeks' furlough from February 7, 2022, barely two weeks before the Punjab Assembly polls. In May, the high court acquitted Singh and four others in the 2002 murder of the sect's former manager Ranjit Singh, citing "tainted and sketchy" investigations in the matter.
A special CBI court had sentenced them to life imprisonment in the nearly 20-year-old murder case. Singh had been held guilty of hatching a criminal conspiracy with his co-accused.
